A few days ago, several countries signed ACTA, the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement. As you are probably aware, ACTA was drafted up in secret, and is basically Obama/Biden's attempt to impose the US' draconian pro-big business/big content protection laws on the rest of the world ('sign it, or else'). The European Parliament still has to vote on it, and as such, Douwe Korff, professor of international law at the London Metropolitan University, and Ian Brown senior research fellow at the University of Oxford, performed a 90-page study, with a harsh conclusion: ACTA violates fundamental human rights.

"I would add the stipulation of due dilligence in owning and using a wifi router. If your running wide open, with WEP or with a weak password then your neglegence did indeed contribute to the copyright infringement"

Do you realize that this is contrary to alot of initiatives for public wifi? For example see fon.com. Open hotspots can sometimes be deliberate, and it's not morally wrong - at worst, it's a violation of your ISP's terms. Many campuses/coffeehouses/hotels/etc have open hotspots.

As for copyright lawsuits, well that is a problem. Unfortunately the courts have no easy way to deal with the fact that IP addresses don't correlate to individuals - so they have to drastically lower the burden of proof, to the point of stabbing in the dark sometimes, in order to try some of these cases. Since the burden of proof is so low, it's quite likely that many innocent people are caught up in the dragnet. Even if a case is completely bogus, it can still be cheaper to settle than to hire defense lawyers and fight it.

If you have any solutions to these problems, I would like to hear them.